ABOUT CARMEN 2
(A BEACH)
This: spectral, in the diffuse light of the voice, with only YOUR HEAD, K., for company.
CARMEN
The truth is, I was only thirteen at the time, and you, K, were sixteen. We met at the port of Camamu—my classmate, Hélen, and I, with my parents, my older sister, and a friend of hers; and you, with a couple of your uncles and their son, your cousin, maybe eight or nine. It was a trip for nouveau riche people, at the time, to an exquisite inn at the tip of the archipelago. We were met by three buggies, driven by inn staff, who took us and our luggage to those beachfront chalets—there was a hot pool next to a steam room, and every now and then someone brought a cold beer to our table from the kiosk; there was also a large glass dining room, next to the owners' house, which served as a restaurant for guests.
After we settled in, we changed and went to meet at the restaurant, where besides all of us, there was also a young couple (thirties or forties) and a single young woman whose beauty was striking. It was only after we ate that Galician octopus that I exchanged my first words with you (K). I asked what year of high school you were in, and you said freshman year of high school; then I asked if you knew what you wanted to study in college yet, and you said:
--- Cinema --- which amused us, left us (Hélen and I) curious, not knowing what to say, since studying cinema was exotic in our circle. In my house, the only things anyone considered were medicine, law, and engineering. Then you added: --- Actually, I'm already taking a screenwriting course at the Goethe Institute, with a director who came from São Paulo and worked in European cinema. It's there in Corredor da Vitória. Besides, I'm already writing my first feature-length script --- and you took a notebook out of a folder on your desk. I asked what the film was about, and you didn't know what to say (you reached for your pack of cigarettes and, after looking around, asked if we both wanted to walk on the beach across the street with you to talk about your "film" ---- you asked if my father would mind, and I said: --- I DON'T THINK SO --- and we went: me, Hélen, you, and that green notebook under your arm. You lit a cigarette and said you'd just arrived from Brumado, from the gemstone mines, with a bunch of green stones in your backpack, that you'd hitchhiked back with a nice trucker and gone straight to wander alone on the beaches of Itaparica Island to reflect on all this; and that the stones were worthless, despite being pretty, and that your school, where you had a sort of girlfriend, was getting really boring. Then Hélen asked:
--- First, at the Bahia Athletic Association, where I train swimming every day as a member. The girls there are different, and I have an affair with my teacher, Simone. And I'm always with Fernanda, who's my age, and I think she's beautiful; and with Maria, who's older than me, and likes rock, like me, and has tattoos all over her body, and smokes pot, and drinks, and— (laughs)
ResponderExcluir--- Got it (I said) That's it? It's not another life. We also go to the Yacht Club and have our own group there---
ResponderExcluir---That's not all. I also wander the early morning hours of Rio Vermelho with lunatics who use and sell drugs. Entering Vale das Pedrinhas at night high on hashish is like leaving Western civilization and entering, high on benzendrine, the incandescent Baghdad of a Caliph, millennia ago. Wasn't ancient Babylon in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates, at the time of the kidnapping of the Jews? Only the caliphate came later. There was something similar: they called the caliphs before Islam Tyrants, like the Tyrants of Ionia, the Aegean cities, Italy, Gaul, Persia, and several other peoples who existed before the Romans and the Muslims (it wasn't necessarily a pejorative term: tyrant). There, I have so many nicknames that practically no one knows my name or where I live. And then there's my office boy job at UFBA, which is truly another planet for me. The girls I work with, one of them is in love with me, and I'm always running away from her, because I'm into the other one, who's a hot brunette, a real woman (she always treats me nicely, even with a certain intimacy, but until recently I missed an opportunity, because the first one is watching us all the time)------------------
--------------------------------then there was that dinner at our boss's house, Geraldo, from the Department of Social Sciences, and Leandra, who was a pain in the ass, couldn't go, she was visiting her parents in the countryside; and then I had an opportunity with Camila, the brunette, when, at the end of the night, Geraldo asked if we "were together," since he was a friend of my father and thought I was too young to "be reading Nietzsche" (as I was during work hours) and, probably, to be dating a, uh, mare like that. So, Camila said (to my surprise): --- Not yet, and laughed --- so, in the taxi, on the way back, I asked if she wanted to stop somewhere, and I suggested the bar at the Goethe Institute, which she accepted. Very pretty, you know?, and a dancer from some famous ballet school in the city --- there at Goethe I met the group with whom I was writing a short film, people who revered me for having written a brilliant short film script in five minutes, during a meeting at one of their beach house in Itapoã, where I got sick because of their hashish and practically passed out locked in the bathroom of the house (while I was agonizing on the floor, sweating cold, a tiny Dachshund puppy climbed on top of me and I talked to him until I got better, and the script was about this ------------------------
ResponderExcluir-------------------------------we filmed that very day and were applauded in the middle of the week: there were verses by Char, Baudelaire and a thought from a Faulkner character about buying a pair of Beagles and starting his own breeding, while the character died of an overdose in the bathroom reflecting on the doctrine and cycle of reincarnation in Buddhism); ---, and after we drank and talked a lot about the film, which was a conclusion of the course, I suggested that Camila, laughing beside me, charming and radiant, be the actress in our last short film of the course (this, by the way, was a ridiculous story about a girl who leaves work in the middle of the afternoon, without telling anyone, after hearing a ridiculous comment from her colleague about her husband's premature aging and baldness (she looks at her watch several times, you know?, in close-up, throughout the entire short film) and goes to smoke a joint under a statue, in Campo Grande square, and while she smokes, a beggar, with an extremely young appearance, and the most stupidly long and unkempt dreadlocks, scratching and complaining of lice while listening to Bob Marley, passes in front of her and asks what time it is,
ResponderExcluirand then (it's the surrealist, bad part of the short) he says something about SPACE and TIME, in the sense that Bergson's MATTER and MEMORY (and he actually takes a paper out of his pocket and reads, here) affirms a radical plurality of DURACIES, that the universe is made of modifications, disturbances, changes of tension and energy, and nothing beyond this; rhythms of durations, that no matter how slow or fast a duration is, each duration is an absolute and that each rhythm is, itself, a duration (in Immediate Data, Bergson actually states that psychological duration, “our duration,” is merely one case among others, in an infinity of others, whose determination appears as a CHOICE among an infinity of possible durations; thus, consequently, according to Bergson’s MATTER and MEMORY, psychology is merely an opening to ONTOLOGY, a springboard for an INSTALLATION IN BEING, according to Deleuze). So, she (Camila) silently hands the joint to the beggar and says: DON’T FUCK WITH ME, I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!, and then the film ends. It’s ridiculous, but Camila loved the script and agreed to act in it, and then we drank, went to her house and --- you said it!
ResponderExcluir"I see," I said. "Another world, really. And the feature film is also about all this?" "It's about all this," you said, pointing to the beach around us and then to me (it was late, I looked at you suspiciously). Then you handed me that strange piece of paper, with those strange phrases, and asked me to read it aloud. I read it and said: "I don't understand," and you said: "It's not supposed to be understood. It's just an acting test." And I said: "But I don't want to be an actress." Then you put your hand around my shoulder and asked if we could stay (Hélen started laughing), and I said: "NO." Then Hélen, who really liked you but was ugly and fat, said: "Stay with him, just one kiss," as if giving me power of attorney to kiss you for her, and then we kissed.
ResponderExcluirIt's incredible, but the only thing that happened between us was this. Soon after, my father (I wonder if he saw?) yelled at us from the inn and told us to stay by the pool, where they were drinking and swimming, because the beach was very dark and deserted. So, I don't really know what happened. You saw some nightclub lights spinning about three miles away and ran toward them, on the other side of the cove. The next morning, you were (holding hands?), I don't remember, but very close to that pretty guest we'd seen dining alone at the inn's restaurant when we arrived. As for the other couple, whom you transformed into Arthur and Susana, after meeting my cousin, no one knew them, much less you, or her, Beatriz. I didn't mind at all—I was a child, that was the second kiss I'd ever had in my life.
ResponderExcluirBEATRIZ
ResponderExcluirHand in hand, huh? That was me, Cherry. I was in the area looking for a guesthouse to buy. Everything else is literature.
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